Russia Samara

Username: Password: Help Type:
Help Remember Me:

Stories: Bogdonovka

Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 -- Add Story

Bogdonovka 22 Feb 2002
In the summer of 1997, Elder Cooper and myself (Elder VanEvery) were called on a special mission...To open a derevnya about 100 miles outside of Samara. We loaded up some Book of Mormons, some Xleb and just the bare essentials. Roman took us out to a village called Bogdonovka, a little place with maybe 600 people. We were excited to be in such a different place. Mission President Gashler was very anxious to see how we could do in the midst of country folk. We rented a room from an old Bobushka. We had no running water, and no inddor plumbing, we got all of our water from a well in the front of the cottage. Elder Cooper and I would walk for hours a day, back and forth across the village talking to everyone about the Gospel. On one end of the village were Prav's and on the other end they called themselves "Malakani". Elder Cooper and I didn't quite understand what that meant until one day we ran into a lady that worked in the School District. She requested to speak with us, so we had a meeting. At first we spoke of the Book Of Mormon, and Joseph Smith, then she explained to us a really amazing story. She told us that her Grandma was A "Mormon" and had been baptised in the early 1900's . She was very modest and refrained from chai and coffee. She also told us that her Grandma had left her a Book of Mormon that was hand written in Russian, that weighed 10 kilos. We asked to see the book, but sadly she had no clue of its whereabouts. Imagine having that in church history. Elder Cooper and I discovered that Saints lived in Bogdonovka many many years ago. They ofcourse were taught by missionaries, and when the missionaries left, they had no contact with them on the outside due to the revolution and communism. We came to the conclusion that The name "Mormon" changed to "malakani" through the years. We were soon driven out of Bogdonavka by the hand of evil(very long story). We had 12 investigators committed to baptism in 2 weeks. We had nothing to eat but warm fresh cow's milk, an occasional peice of bread and Marinda with chips from the local store. I can't recall the Elder from the 70's that said it , but he said that someday in entire villages of Russia will come unto Christ and be baptised, and there will not be enough places to hold them...just thought I would share with you a peice of my mission, one of the greatest times of my life. Elder Brent Van Every
Brent Allen Van Every Send Email
 

Part of the LDS Mission Networksm · The mission home of the World Wide Web.sm
Copyright © 2001 The LDS Mission Networksm · Mission.net / LDSMissions.net. All rights reserved.
"Site-in-a-Box" (SIB) is a service mark of the LDS Mission Network. Version 2.1